Control, Trust, and Workplace Norms

Week 11 · November 9, 2026

Why can giving workers more discretion sometimes increase effort and cooperation?

Opening Hook

A manager can monitor every step, approve every decision, and require proof of every action. Or the manager can leave room for judgment. The first approach seems safer. The second may produce more trust, initiative, and reciprocity.

Here is the question this session is about: when does control improve performance, and when does abstaining from control create hidden benefits?

Control Aversion

Control can solve agency problems, but it can also signal distrust. If workers interpret monitoring as a hostile act, they may reduce voluntary cooperation. The Burdin, Halliday, and Landini reading studies the hidden benefits of abstaining from control: sometimes discretion invites reciprocity.

Control changes information and incentives, but it also changes the social meaning of the relationship.

What kind of workplace behavior is most likely to disappear when workers feel they are not trusted?

Norms and Reciprocity

Gneezy and coauthors’ work on workplace norms emphasizes that behavior is shaped by expectations about what others will do and what actions are appropriate. Norms can support cooperation, but they can also enforce exclusion, silence, or unhealthy effort standards.

Workplace norms are informal rules that shape behavior by changing what feels expected, appropriate, or reciprocated.

Why might abstaining from control increase effort?

1. Because managers learn less.
2. Because workers may reciprocate trust with higher effort or cooperation.
3. Because control never affects incentives.
4. Because all workers dislike all rules equally.

Review Cards

Connections

Builds on: Session 10, where meaning and recognition complicated incentive design.

Sets up: Session 12, where AI makes monitoring, prediction, and control easier while changing who holds decision authority.

Reading Guide

Required

Gneezy et al. Reading on workplace norms. Canvas/library.

What to look for: How informal expectations shape behavior in ways that formal incentives alone do not capture.

Burdin, Halliday, and Landini. “The Hidden Benefits of Abstaining from Control.” Canvas/library.

What to look for: Why less control can sometimes produce more cooperation.

Recommended

Guido Friebel, Matthias Heinz, Mitchell Hoffman, Tobias Kretschmer, and Nick Zubanov. “Is This Really Kneaded? Identifying and Eliminating Potentially Harmful Forms of Workplace Control.”

Compare monitoring that helps coordination with monitoring that workers and managers experience as low-value or demeaning. Track the effects of removing checklists on sales, trust, commitment, and manager retention.

Jing Cai, Sai Luo, and Shing-Yi Wang. “Money or Monitoring: Evidence on Improving Worker Effort.”

Compare the channels through which compensation and monitoring affect effort, performance, and quitting.

Optional

Schmelz. Reading on institutions and autonomy. Canvas/library.

Use this to think about when autonomy works as a motivational institution.